Can someone please tell me why it is that doing work for God can be so hard sometimes? I mean, honestly - is it so naive to think that when you're doing something that is kingdom-building and relevant to the community that maybe you could catch a break every once in a while? One step forward and two steps back gets a little tiresome. By no means do I expect living and working for God to be a bed of roses, but does it have to be a pit of thorns? Seriously, it sometimes feels like our definition of things going well is just that nothing is going wrong. And what is so horribly unfair is to be in this city of giant churches with boatloads of money - churches that can do whatever they want and spend whatever they want, despite the fact that their theology leaves at least a little something to be desired. (And I'm not talking nitpicky theology stuff here.) So I guess my real question is, why does it seem like God blesses the churches that are built on shaky theological ground, but churches that are at least doing the best they can to seek after His will are forever fighting for every inch?

yummy

Try this - take a wheat tortilla, warm it up (on a griddle or in a toaster oven), spread some peanut butter on it (of course crunchy is best), and roll up a banana in it. Fantastic. If you're in need of a little mood enhancing, sprinkle some chocolate chips on the peanut butter before you roll up the banana. If the tortilla is warm enough, the peanut butter and chocolate chips will get a little bit gooey, which I don't need to tell you is delicious.

Sorry, absolutely no purpose to this post other than that's what I just had for breakfast (because we are out of milk and without the chocolate chips) while catching up on the late night blogging efforts (because some of us have children who got their penchant for early mornings NOT FROM ME!) Okay, better now. :)

As evidence of my lateness in entering the blog world, the first 6 or so URLs I tried were all taken. Now, that may not seem like much to you of the AOL persuasion, but I've never had that happen to me before in the online world. I could regale you with tales of my inherent coolness resulting from my early foray into the realm of all things computer, but I'll spare you. (Isn't it interesting how the internet/computers are super cool now, but 10-15 years ago were the sole domain of the nerds and socially challenged?)

On another note, what is the deal with other countries? So Portugal is asking for help because they can't deal with the wildfires going on in their country. That's fine, I have no problem with that, and I even feel sympathy for the people who have no homes now because of the fires. And this really doesn't even have anything to do with Portugal. But they're asking for help, like lots of countries ask for help when bad things happen. Have you ever considered, though, that the U.S. never asks for help? To which you respond, because we don't need help. And you're right - we don't need help from other countries. But we give help to other countries whenever they ask. And many private (and gasp! religious) organizations provide help to the people of other countries when the governments of those countries are to corrupt or evil to care about their people and don't ask for help. Yet, what do we get in return? Criticism at every turn. Not that criticism doesn't have its place - particularly in government. The government shouldn't be able to blink without scrutiny. I'm just saying that this country is generous and helpful (and if we weren't, we'd be criticized). Honestly, I'd rather be here and get criticized for things that are untrue than to be in a country that needed to ask for help when something goes wrong.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our sociopolitical commentary portion of the show. (For today, at least.)